DAIRY ST R FALL & WINTER
Calf & Heifer Special Edition
PHOTO BY JENNIFER COYNE/DAIRY STAR
October 23, 2021
Page 2 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
DAIRY ST R www.dairystar.com
522 Sinclair Lewis Ave. Sauk Centre, MN 56378 Phone: (320) 352-6303 Fax: (320) 352-5647
Calves are an investment at J&A Dairy
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Mark Klaphake - mark.k@dairystar.com 320-352-6303 (ofce) 320-248-3196 (cell) 320-352-0062 (home) Ad Composition
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Sales Manager - Joyce Frericks 320-352-6303 • joyce@dairystar.com Mark Klaphake (Western MN) 320-352-6303 (ofce) • 320-248-3196 (cell) Laura Seljan (National Advertising, SE MN) 507-250-2217 fax: 507-634-4413 laura.s@dairystar.com Jerry Nelson (SW MN, NW Iowa, South Dakota) 605-690-6260 jerry.n@dairystar.com Bob Leukam (Northern MN, East Central MN) 320-260-1248 (cell) bob.l@star-pub.com Mike Schafer (Central, South Central MN) 320-894-7825 mike.s@dairystar.com Amanda Hoeer (Eastern Iowa, NE WI) 320-250-2884 • amanda.h@dairystar.com Megan Stuessel (Western Wisconsin) 608-387-1202 • megan.s@dairystar.com Kati Kindschuh (Northeast WI and Upper MI) 920-979-5284 • kati.k@dairystar.com Deadlines The deadline for news and advertising in the Dairy Star is 5 p.m. Friday the week before publication. Subscriptions One year subscription $35.00, outside the U.S. $110.00. Send check along with mailing address to Dairy Star, 522 Sinclair Lewis Ave., Sauk Centre, MN 56378.
MARK KLAPHAKE/DAIRY STAR
Tryone Aho (from leŌ), Thomas Aho and Adrian Aho stand in their calf barn at J&A Dairy near Frazee, Minnesota. The Ahos use a tube-venƟlated hoop barn to house calves unƟl about 1 month of age.
New calving area, barn get youngstock off to strong start By Jennifer Coyne jenn@dairystar.com
FRAZEE, Minn. – From the minute a calf hits the ground, its health and well-being are essential for the viability of J&A Dairy. “We invest in our calves because they’re the future of our herd,” Tyrone Aho said.
Tyrone is the herdsman at J&A Dairy where his cousins, Adrian and Jamin Aho, milk 448 cows in Becker County near Frazee. In July, the family completed an addition onto their freestall barn which includes a maternity pen to compliment the farm’s youngstock management program; a system that was redesigned three years ago with the construction of a tube-ventilated hoop barn. Dry cows freshen in a large, sawdust bedded pen and then the calves are immediately transferred to individual pens inside the hoop barn. “We’ve made some huge improve-
ments, and so far, the cows and calves are doing great,” Adrian said. In 2018, the brothers decided to construct a building that would house the calf pens. Not only could the facility provide a better environment for the animals, but it also had potential for a better working environment for Tyrone, Adrian, and Adrian and Jamin’s dad, Reino, who are the primary caretakers of the youngstock. “Honestly, I didn’t like feeding calves in hutches,” Adrian said. “My brother, Tim, has a similar setup to this at his farm. That’s what we based Turn to AHOS | Page 4
Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 3
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Page 4 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
ConƟnued from AHOS | Page 2
this off of when putting this together.” The scheme is simple yet effective. A group of 60 calf pens line the sidewalls of the 30- by 140-foot hoop barn which was constructed with two half sections of a building. Calves lay atop wheat straw over a couple inches of sawdust, with gravel beneath to act as a permeated barrier for moisture. The Ahos manually pitch out the pens after a calf moves out of the barn at about 1 month of age. The gravel remains but the sawdust and straw are replenished for the next calf. “Pitching it all out is the worst part of this barn,” Tyrone said.
Right now, as calves enter the barn, the youngest are housed on the south side of the building. Once the older ones leave, the newborn calves will be housed in pens on the north end of the barn. “We try to order them from youngest to oldest, going in a row and grouped in sections of the barn,” Tyrone said. “For example, just the other day, we had four newborn calves. They’re all housed in adjacent pens.” The center aisle of the barn is cement which allows for the Ahos’ Milk Shuttle to move easily through the barn. Calves are fed pasteurized milk twice daily and receive free-choice grain the entire time they are housed in the JENNIFER COYNE /DAIRY STAR
The tube-venƟlated hoop barn can house up to 60 calves in individual pens at J&A Dairy near Frazee, Minnesota.
MARK KLAPHAKE/DAIRY STAR
Prefresh cows are housed in a sawdust-bedded maternity pen adjacent to the freestall barn. The pen was constructed this past summer.
building. After one month, they are relocated to group housing at a different farm site. The Ahos began feeding pasteurized milk with the milk delivery system about 1.5 years ago. Previously, calves were fed milk replacer in buckets and bottles. “The pasteurized milk just starts them off right,” Adrian said. “We used to feed powdered milk after that rst feeding, but it just didn’t work
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as good. We really like how we’re doing it now.” Tyrone agreed. “With the shuttle, we can determine how much we’re feeding each individual calf,” he said. “It’s efcient. We move through the barn, lling the pails down both rows of calves.” The system has allowed the Ahos to signicantly cut their time feeding calves. Tyrone said all 60 calves could be fed in 15 minutes barring
no troubles with sick calves, or newborns learning how to drink. While the barn design allows for more efcient management of the youngstock, more importantly, it has created a healthier environment for the calves. “Since being in this setup, calf health has been really good,” Adrian said. “And, we’re seeing the calves gain Turn to AHOS | Page 5
Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 5
ConƟnued from AHOS | Page 4
a lot better than they were before.” Tyrone agreed. “We’re seeing the calves grow faster because they’re healthier,” he said, noting a signicant decrease in scours and pneumonia incidences. “Even if we do get one or two calves that come down with scours, it’s not spreading.” The tube ventilation and hoop barn design allow for sufcient air ow throughout the building. Exhaust fans on the east end of the barn turn on when temperatures in the building exceed 50 degrees, and the tube is constantly running to bring air in and circulate amongst the animals. “They always talk about how much air animals really need to be in a healthy environment,” Adrian said. The facility is not heated, but the light-colored sidewalls allow ample natural light and heat in. “This was really built so all the calves and those feeding the calves
could work out of the elements,” said Adrian, mentioning young calves wear jackets when temperatures are consistently below freezing. “If the sun is
“We invest in our calves because they’re the future of our our herd.” TYRONE AHO J&A DAIRY
shining, it warms up a little in here.” “In this environment, (the calves) can handle 20 below weather pretty well with ample bedding and calf coats,” he said. The Ahos raise one-third of their most elite Holstein heifers and keep a few bull calves that have the potential for breeding. The other two-thirds of the heifer calves, along with all the Holstein-Limousine crossbreds, are also raised to weaning before being sold to their heifer raiser in Deer Creek. With the family’s intentions of developing genetically superior replacements for the milking herd, their structural and protocol improvements are proving to be wise investments. “All of this is more user-friendly, where everything is on-site and out of the weather,” Tyrone said. “We’re able to observe and care for calves efciently JENNIFER COYNE/DAIRY STAR and we know healthy A Holstein-Limousine crossbred is raised in the Ahos’ calves develop into calf barn. The crossbreds are raised unƟl weaning and protable cows.” then sold to the farm’s heifer raiser.
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Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 7
SDSU studies calf health issues Experiments look at water quality, effectiveness of postbiotics By Jerry Nelson
jerry.n@dairystar.com
BROOKINGS, S.D. – Researchers at South Dakota State University are continuing to study a variety of factors that can help dairy farmers with raising calves. A recent study looked into the effects that water quality can have on the health and growth performance of dairy calves. According to the study’s authors, poor water quality can negatively affect water’s palatability and consumption. Heifer calves are some of the most selective and vulnerable animals on the dairy farm. “Water availability and quality are essential to raising healthy calves,” said Dr. Maristela Rovai said. “Water is key in rumen development and keeping the calf hydrated.” In an experiment carried out by Rovia and other researchers, six weaned Holstein heifer calves were placed in individual pens. Each pen was equipped with ve identical water buckets that were arranged in a row. The three center buckets were supplied with puried reverse osmosis water, city water and untreated well water from a local
dairy farm. The two end buckets were left empty to eliminate border effects. The calves were given grass hay on a free choice basis and were fed ve pounds of commercial calf grower pellets twice a day. Water levels were checked three times a day, and water was added as needed. Daily intakes of feed and water were recorded, and the position of each water was randomized every day for each heifer calf to help reduce position bias. Wa t e r q u a l i t y w a s checked prior to the weeklong experiment. The reverse osmosis water was by far the softest at 17.60 milligrams per liter. Next came the city water at 249 milligrams per liter, while the dairy farm well water had a hardness of 964 milligrams per liter. The dairy farm’s well water also tested positive for E. coli. The reverse osmosis water had only a fraction of the calcium, magnesium, sodium and sulfates that were found in the other two water sources. During the experiment, it was found that the reverse osmosis water was consumed by the calves in the greatest quantity. In fact, ve of the six Turn to RESEARCH | Page 8
PHOTO SUBMITTED
(Above) Dr. Ahmed Salama and Dr. Maristela Rovia conduct an on-farm study to test the effec�veness of giving a daily dose of a postbio�c to newborn calves at a dairy in South Dakota. The goal of the experiment was to see if the postbio�c boosted the calves’ immune response. PHOTO SUBMITTED
(Right) Dr. Maristela Rovai checks the height and weight of a heifer calf. The calf was part of an on-farm experiment that tested the immunological effects of a postbio�c that was administered on a daily basis.
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Weaned calves are offered water that has varying levels of quality during a research trial at South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota. It was found that the calves preferred reverse osmosis water over city water and untreated well water from a local dairy farm.
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calves showed a clear preference for the reverse osmosis water. City water came in second and the untreated well water was found to be the least preferred. On average, the calves drank nearly twice as much reverse osmosis water as untreated well water. The researchers concluded that a reverse osmosis filtration system would encourage greater water intake by growing heifer calves in a situation where untreated well water is the only water source. “Providing good quality water to livestock is a major challenge in the Midwest region, and water quality should be our focus when raising calves,” Rovai said. “Good management practices also include monitoring the calves’ water consumption.” In another study, Dr. Ahmed Salama and Rovai looked at the possible
immunological benets of postbiotic usage in calves. The postbiotic contained bioactive ingredients produced during the fermentation process of lactic acid bacteria (probiotic) and non-bitter yeasts (prebiotic). “The claimed benets of postbiotics as a feed supplement include better feed efciency, growth performance and an increase in natural resistance to diseases,” Rovai said. The study was carried out on a local dairy farm. A group of 70 Holstein-Jersey heifer calves was evenly divided into two groups. Half of the calves began receiving a daily dose of the postbiotic Probisan at 3 days of age while the other half of the calves served as a control group. The calves were all fed the Turn to RESEARCH | Page 9
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PHOTO SUBMITTED
SDSU researchers observe the speed of healing aŌer dehorning in a control group of calves and in a group that had been given a postbioƟc. It was found that the calves that received the postbioƟc healed faster and had fewer infecƟons. same and were all nasally vaccinated with Inforce 3 at 9 weeks of age. At 16 weeks of age, nasal secretions were collected and analyzed for immune components. Blood was also collected from the calves and challenged with E. coli and Salmo nella lipopolysaccharides. After being incubated for 3.5 hours, the blood’s plasma was harvested and checked for the immune response. At the end of the study, there were no difference in the average body weight between the treated group and the untreated group. However, it was discovered that the nasal secretions of the treated calves had an increased level of immunoglobins. The lipopolysaccharides
Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 9
blood challenge also showed that the treated calves’ blood had a decreased inammation reaction. These results suggest that postbiotics might be used in the future as an alternative to antibiotic treatments. An additional evaluation was conducted when the calves were dehorned. At about 43 days of age, the 70 calves in the study were dehorned after being administered a general sedative and a nonsteroid anti-inammatory drug. The calves were closely observed for the next three weeks. The number of infections and the speed of wound healing were recorded. At 10 days after dehorning, almost 50% of the calves in the control group showed signs of inammation at the wound site. Only 27% of the calves that were supplemented with Probisan suffered wound healing problems at that time. At 20 days after dehorning, the treated group continued to show a clear advantage regarding the number of infections and the speed of healing at the wound site. Better healing of the wound sites in the calves that were supplemented suggests an improvement in immune response. These ndings highlight the usefulness of postbiotics in calves that are exposed to stressful situations or adverse conditions. “As researchers, we are constantly trying to develop ways to prevent or treat diseases that affect livestock,” Rovai said. “The productivity, welfare and health of calves should be improved by management or feeding. The calf’s care is an integral part of obtaining healthy and productive dairy cows. When calves are well fed, they are in good health and well-being, producing more milk in future lactations.”
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Page 10 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
Ventilation, sanitation key to raising calves Selz-Pralle Dairy sees great improvements in new facility By Danielle Nauman danielle.n@dairystar.com
H U M B I R D , Wi s . – Planning and preparing for the future plays a pretty big role in managing any dairy farm. Like most other dairy farms, at Selz-Pralle Dairy near Humbird, Wis., those plans and preparations include a primary focus on the future generations: the calves that will make up the
milking herd for years to come. Scott Pralle and Pam SelzPralle milk 500 registered Holsteins on their Clark County dairy farm. Their three grown children, Ryan, Jessica and Nicole, all continue to be involved in the home farm, despite all working off the farm in other ag-related jobs. When it comes to caring for their calves, the Pralles believe in going all-out and striving for perfection. Sometimes that philosophy can make the current
DANIELLE NAUMAN/DAIRY STAR
Selz-Pralle Dairy family members – (from leŌ) David Trimner, Jessica Trimner-Pralle, ScoƩ Pralle, Pam Selz-Pralle, Nicole Pralle and Ryan Pralle – milk 500 cows on Selz-Pralle Dairy near Humbird, Wisconsin.
DANIELLE NAUMAN/DAIRY STAR
Calves at Selz-Pralle Dairy are raised in groups of four in their recently built posiƟve-pressure venƟlated calf barn. The groups are fed with mob-feeders from 2 weeks of age unƟl weaning.
situation feel frustrating and difcult. That is what Pam SelzPralle was experiencing several years ago. At the time, the calves at Selz-Pralle Dairy were housed in a naturally ventilated calf barn, in individual pens. They were growing, but Selz-Pralle said she just did not feel like they
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were performing up to their full genetic potential on twice-a-day feedings. In an attempt to improve results, a third feeding was added. Daily gain increased, but other management issues reared their head. With the increased milk consumption, Selz-Pralle noted that the calves were
consuming less calf starter. The additional volume of liquid being consumed resulted in increased urine output, causing more wet bedding and more ammonia in the calves’ environment. The result was a drastic increase in Turn to SELZ-PRALLE | Page 11
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Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 11
ConƟnued from SELZ-PRALLE | Page 10
DANIELLE NAUMAN/DAIRY STAR
An old Ɵestall barn is used as a maternity area at Selz-Pralle Dairy near Humbird, Wisconsin. Prior to the new calf barn being built, this Ɵestall barn served as calf housing. pneumonia cases. By nature, Selz-Pralle is a problemsolver, so she added fans to help increase air ow in the naturally ventilated barn. She continued to nd that there simply was no way to move enough air at bedding level in the individual pens. “We increased the intensity of our management practices to try to compensate for the limitations of the facility,” Selz-Pralle said. Selz-Pralle said protocol became to treat any calf with indication of heavy breathing or a temperature in the range of 102.5 to 103°F. Calves presenting high temperatures were often a daily occurrence, and Selz-Pralle estimated that nearly three-quarters of her preweaned calves were being treated. Her frustration level continued to sky-rocket, and she decided that the only remedy would come from drastic change. That change came in the form a
positive-pressure ventilation barn which was built in 2018. The Pralles made the decision to switch from raising their calves individually to utilizing group pens and mob-feeders. The new barn was designed with 20 gated-pipe pens measuring 13.5 x 13.5 feet, 45 square feet each, to hold four calves. The base of the pens consists of draining rock, covered by a landscape barrier and topped with a layer of limestone gravel. The pens are bedded with straw, which the Pralles say they prefer over sawdust, as they feel sawdust holds more ammonia. The barn is ventilated by positivepressure fans bringing air into the building; circulating fans placed above the pens push air downwards, bringing
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Page 12 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
ConƟnued from SELZ-PRALLE | Page 11 fresh air to the bedding level. “This system was designed to provide an exchange of air at nose level every six to eight minutes,” Selz-Pralle said.
rst colostrum, followed by transition milk for the next two or three days. For the rst two weeks, newborn calves are housed individually before being moved into their group. Once introduced to the group, they are mob-fed, twice daily, receiving up to 8.5 liters of milk per day. Tracking daily gain is one way the Pralles quantify how their calves are performing. They look to reach a rate of gain of 1.8 to 2 pounds a day for the PAM SELZǧPRALLE, DAIRY FARMER rst two months. In months two through four, the goal is to reach The Pralles believe that colostrum 2.5 pounds per day. Since building their new barn, the management is a priority in setting their calves up for success and Brix score all Pralles have enjoyed healthier calves, colostrum. At birth, the Pralles ensure that with fewer issues and less strenuous calves are fed one gallon of true colostrum management. Since moving in to the new within the rst 15 minutes of life. The barn, Selz-Pralle said her calf mortality second feeding consists of two quarts of rate has dropped to less than half a percent
“I like to get down to nose level, where the calves are laying, and make sure the air is truly fresh ...”
DANIELLE NAUMAN/DAIRY STAR
The recently built calf barn at Selz-Pralle Dairy features posiƟve-pressure venƟlaƟon, with ceiling fans pushing air downward to the bedding level. Calves are bedded with straw to prevent a buildup of ammonia.
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and her treatment rate has dropped to only 1%, as opposed to the nearly 75% rate she was dealing with in the older facility. A somewhat unexpected benet that Selz-Pralle has witnessed is how well the calves do in the social grouping. “They really learn from each other,” Selz-Pralle said. “They are typically eating 8 pounds of calf starter a day by weaning.” Selz-Pralle says in her mind, the attention paid to both ventilation and sanitation is the key to the successes she has witnessed in the new calf facility. “We are a little persnickety about sanitation,” Selz-Pralle said. “I like to
get down to nose level, where the calves are laying, and make sure the air is truly fresh; we clean the mob-feeders and nipples thoroughly after each feeding.” Besides the results they see walking through the calf and heifer barns, the Pralles are also seeing results in the milking parlor, as the earliest group of calves raised in the new barn are nishing up their rst lactations. “On average, the 2-year-olds who were raised in the new barn are outperforming our previous 2-year-old groups with increased production of about 12 pounds a day,” Selz-Pralle said.
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Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 13
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Page 14 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
Quality heifers leads to quality cows Fetzers bring youngstock home By Abby Wiedmeyer abby.w@dairystar.com
ELMWOOD, Wis. – Paul Fetzer, of Fetzer Farms, manages the family’s 1,400-cow dairy along with his two brothers, Steve and Joe. The brothers are the fourth generation to operate Fetzer Farms, and for the last six years they have focused on raising their own youngstock. The decision to raise their own calves came after years of having their youngstock custom raised at several different heifer growers. Somewhere between the year 2000 and 2005, Tuberculosis broke out in Minnesota, impacting the location of one of their heifer growers. The Fetzers had to test every animal before it came back to Wisconsin, and then quarantine them once they were home. Before taking the animals Paul Fetzer Elmwood, Wisconsin out of quarantine they had to be tested again. The whole process became very costly. The Fetzers then worked with a local heifer grower to avoid all the Tuberculosis testing, but they ran into poor luck with some automatic
ABBY WIEDMEYER/DAIRY STAR
Heifers 100 days old up to 7 months of age are housed in a tunnel-venƟlated barn with direct drive fans at Fetzer Farms in Pierce County near Elmwood, Wisconsin. For the last six years, the Fetzers have raised all of their youngstock.
feeders. The string of unfortunate events led the Fetzers to start experimenting with raising some calves at home. They realized that the calves they raised were bigger at weaning age than the calves at the grower. At rst, they only kept calves until they were weaned before sending them to a grower, but when a farm came
for sale only 12 miles from the home farm, the Fetzers decided it was time to raise the older heifers themselves too. Currently, calves begin in calf huts at the home farm. They are fed pasteurized milk in bottles and stay in huts for about 100 days. The calves lay on a deep bed of chopped straw, with additional bedding added every week. Once weaned, calves move to
their rst barn. The rst barn holds around 300 animals at a time. The group sizes grow as the animals get older. They start off in groups of eight to 12 and end up in groups of about 26 to 30. The calves are brought in weaned, around 10 weeks, and stay until they Turn to FETZER | Page 15
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Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 15
ConƟnued from FETZER | Page 14
are six or seven months old. Four fans on the side of the barn and two on the end pull air in. Fans hang in between to keep air moving in one direction, and three fans on the end draw the air out. All fans are direct-drive and can be monitored from Chippewa Falls. Engineers and veterinarians work together to help manage the fans.
“What we found with the cornstalks is we use a lot less bedding since it’s so absorbant.” PAUL FETZER, FETZER FARMS
“They’ve done a really fantastic job of helping us out and making sure things work up here,” Steve said. Everything used to be bedded with corn stalks in the rst barn, but the
Fetzers found the younger calves were eating a lot of the stalks and getting upset stomachs. Now the younger calves are bedded with chopped straw, and the older ones are bedded with corn stalks. This has helped reduce exposure to clostridium and has kept the heifers feeling better and growing faster. “What we found with the corn stalks is we use a lot less bedding since it’s so absorbent,” Paul said. Calves are fed grower grain when they rst come to the barn and are transitioned to a TMR by the time they leave for the second barn. The second heifer barn was built with slatted oors and manure storage underneath. By having the manure storage under the barn, they avoid rainwater getting added to the manure and land is not wasted by building a separate manure pit. They also save on equipment since they never have to go in and clean the barn. This results in less interruption to the animals, which
ABBY WIEDMEYER/DAIRY STAR
Heifers are housed in group pens aŌer weaning at Fetzer Farms near Elmwood, Wisconsin. The setup makes cleaning, bedding and feeding easy.
Turn to FETZER | Page 18
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Leo knew best
Leo had about 20 Holstein cows, and they were housed in a typical, circa 1940’s-style stanchion barn. There was a pen in the corner where he raised baby calves. The time was 1981. A young, newly minted veterinarian often visited the dairy, sometimes to vaccinate the calves for Veterinary Wisdom brucellosis. Leo’s calves were hardly ever sick. The pen was always well bedded with clean, dry, bright yellow straw. One day the young veterinarian asked Leo why his calves never got sick. “There is no secret, Doc; just make sure there is always lots of clean straw.” All work, in any system, is done in a process. By Jim Bennett A process is just a series of Columnist steps, that when completed, produce a result. Consistency, or compliance to the process, is important in producing the desired result. Leo may not have known anything about the science of process management, but he understood two things very well: The process needs to be correct, and the process needs to be performed consistently. Raising baby calves is difcult because not having correct processes or not performing the processes consistently can result in disaster. So how do we dene correct calf raising processes and how do we ensure compliance to keep calves healthy and growing well? First, understand that if we do not dene a process for any specic job, the person doing the job will develop their own. That is what Leo did. He likely developed and rened his processes over many years as he learned what worked for him. On dairies today, it is often an employee that has to develop his or her own processes if the manager or owner has not done so. If you, as the employer, are lucky enough to employ a high achiever who
Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021 • Page 17
will develop great processes and stick to them, good for you. However, sooner or later everyone moves on, and the next person that lls that position most likely will not be a superstar. Thus, the right way is to dene the processes before you hire that person. How do we feed calves on this dairy? What are the exact steps? The answers to these questions should be detailed enough so that any reasonably intelligent human can understand and follow them. Where do we nd such denitions? Well, most likely you already have them if you have a successful calf raising program. They just may not be written down. If not, ask your veterinarian for help. Many coops now employ calf specialists that can help you too. Once you have the written processes, monitor the results. If the results are not what you expected, then one of two things is happening. Either the process is wrong or compliance to the process is incorrect. For example, if your process is to feed a total of two quarts of colostrum, most experts will tell you that the result will be more disease and death, with lower growth rates. The process is not correct. However, if your process is to feed four quarts at the rst feeding and two more at the next feeding, that part of the process is probably correct. If you are still having too much disease and death, then perhaps someone is not actually doing what they are supposed to do. Sometimes the problem is a combination of wrong processes and wrong compliance. You may have to use your detective hat to gure out the real problem. Human beings seem to have a bias toward changing the process when results are incorrect. Perhaps you try a different milk replacer, or a new vaccination protocol, for example. While these might be good ideas, do you know if the current milk replacer is being fed according to protocol, or if the current vaccine process is actually being used? If not, changing will only introduce more variability into the system, and while it might improve results for a while, eventually it will produce poor results. Second, we need to understand that one simply cannot foresee every future event that might affect a
process. What happens when the power goes out, or there is no water, for example? This means that simply writing down a process and trying to enforce compliance is not enough. Sooner or later every employee will need to make a decision that is not described in your process denition. The solution to this problem is in the “why.” Why do we do it this way? What are we trying to accomplish? If employees understand why we do things a certain way they will hopefully make the right decision when something happens that was not anticipated. Employees make decisions on every dairy, every day, and most of the time, managers and employers have no idea about most of them. That is OK if processes are well dened, and employees understand the “why” of every process. Finally, processes are not chiseled in stone. They will change. We learn new things. For example, at
R ii b Raising baby b calves l iis diffi difficult. l Some people are just really good at it, like Leo. one time we thought the right process was to gives calves two quarts of colostrum at birth. Now we know differently. We do not want to change a process that is working just to meet someone’s idea of a better process, though. Before changing, ask the question, “Are we getting the results we expect?” If so, then perhaps the results we expect could be better. If that is so, then the process can be modied. Otherwise, the process is best left alone. Raising baby calves is difcult. Some people are just really good at it, like Leo. The rest of us, though, need dened processes and need to perform those processes correctly to have healthy, fast-growing calves.
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Page 18 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
ConƟnued from FETZER | Page 15
is especially important in this barn since the heifers are breeding age. Air ow is managed with fans and cupolas in the roof. When the pit gets agitated and pumped, every fan is turned on and garage doors are opened up. There was one bad winter when they had water lines freeze, but they were able to get everything thawed by shutting off fans, closing doors, and opening the cupolas. “Within less than 12 hours we had everything thawed out and we were good to go after that, with no health issues,” Paul said. One challenge the Fetzers dealt with in the second barn was over-active heifers. The younger animals would race each other and end up taking a corner too fast, thus getting a toe caught in the slat and sometimes losing it. To remedy this, they put up gates on either end of the pen to slow them down. For a while the heifers were also fed a supplement that helped to calm them. They have since cut the supplement out to save money and have been ne without it. The extra gates remain in place. “We run into virtually zero issues in this barn, now that we got rid of the racing,” Paul said. Heifers are kept in the second barn until they are 160 days pregnant, and then they are taken back to the main dairy to calve. After years of guring out what worked for them, the Fetzers have created a solid heifer raising system, which allows them to milk quality cows.
ABBY WIEDMEYER/DAIRY STAR
Paul Fetzer observes a calf that is housed in an individual pen at Fetzer Farms near Elmwood, Wisconsin. Calves stay in individual pens unƟl weaned.
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Page 20 • Dairy Star Special Edition • Saturday, October 23, 2021
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